A fireman who was commended for his bravery during the July 7 attacks was a
key player in a 35-strong criminal network that ran a £100 million drug
empire, Scotland Yard has revealed.

Simon Ford, 41, who was awarded a London Fire Brigade Gold Award for risking his life to get victims off the No 30 bus in Tavistock Square in 2005, was jailed for 14 years after police raided his home and caught him with 110kg of cocaine.

Members of the London-based drugs and money laundering gang, believed to be one of the biggest of its kind in the UK, have been jailed for more than 200 years between them following an unprecedented police operation and one of the largest simultaneous dawn raids ever undertaken.

The raids, at more than 30 addresses across London and the South East, resulted in 16 trials.

A JCB was used to break into a fortified £3 million property in Hillingdon, west London, where police smashed through the perimeter wall and used sledgehammers and an angle grinder to break through a strengthened door.

When police swooped on Mr Ford’s flat in Chertsey, Surrey, he was in the process of dividing up the cocaine for delivery to various dealers around the M25.

The fireman, who could be called to give evidence at the July 7 inquiry, had picked up the drugs, still wet and in waterproof canoe bags on his kitchen floor, just hours earlier in Hythe, Kent.

They had been smuggled from the continent on an inflatable boat.

His bravery medal was displayed on a table near to where he was sorting through the 25kg parcels.

Detectives believe the drugs would have been distributed to couriers around the M25 within the hour.

Police said the operation, code-named Eaglewood, had targeted the ring leaders of the drug empire, many of whom were living a life of luxury with property in some of London’s wealthiest areas of Mayfair, Hyde Park and Marble Arch.

Detectives said the men used a taxi business called Royal Oak Taxis, based in a shabby breezeblock building, in west London as their headquarters and a "clearing house'' for up to several million a week generated by drug dealers.

Couriers would bring in bundles of cash that were taken to a bureau de change and exchanged for 500 euro notes to make the sums more manageable.

Mr Ford first came under police surveillance as he dropped off holdalls full of cash in the vicinity of the taxi company. He was off work sick at the time.

The fireman, who police said lived a “champagne lifestyle” and drove two Audis, was later convicted of money laundering and conspiracy to supply cocaine.

In mitigation, he said he had turned to drugs as he struggled to cope with stress in the wake of the July 7 attacks.

The undercover police investigation was launched in April 2007 and ended in February 2008 with the series of dawn raids involving 520 officers.

The last of the 33 gang members, Anwar Laraba, 39, was jailed for four years and eight months today at Southwark Crown Court.

Others convicted include Eyad Iktilat, 47, who ran the taxi company renting and repairing black cabs, and Russell Tate, the brother of Pat Tate, one of three drugs dealers killed in a Range Rover in Rettendon, Essex, in 1995.

Iktilat spent his profits on a Bentley and a Porsche with personalised number plates and was lavishing £2.75m on a luxury villa development in Spain.

Scotland Yard's Det Supt Steven Richardson said: “Operation Eaglewood targeted the ring leaders of a criminal network, as well as the people working for them. They had been supplying drugs around the country, earning millions of pounds.

“The sentencing of 33 criminals to more than 200 years in prison represents a huge blow to the illegal drugs industry. These criminals had been living the lives of wealthy businessmen through their criminal activity. The lives they are leading now could not be more different.”

He said that firearms were seized as well as cash totalling more than 2.5 million euro and £500,000.

Assets including land, property and bank accounts linked to the network have been traced to Spain, Israel, India, UAE, Dubai and north Africa.

The gang included British, Israeli, Iraqi, Egyptian and Irish nationals but all were resident in the UK.

The taxi company’s premises were used to receive the proceeds of the illegal activities in cash, often bags stuffed with up to £1 million.

Once received, the money was picked up by Jean-Claude Frigieri, 56, who worked for euro Foreign Exchange, a currency exchange company in Paddington.

Frigieri bought hundreds of thousands of pounds-worth of 500 euro notes from a banknote wholesaler known as Interchange.

British banks have now stopped supplying these notes to bureaus de change in the UK because of their links to organised crime.

Maythem Al Ansari, who owned the Hillingdon property, was an Iraqi national who acted as a secondary banker, police said. He was jailed for three years.

After seeking asylum in the UK, he worked as a bus driver but went on to build a multi-million pound property empire, which lent an air of legitimacy to his dealings.

He had changed his name from Mithum Mohammed to Al Ansari – a famous banking name in Saudi Arabia.

Aman Salhan, 28, a cage fighter, was in Ford’s flat during the raid. He was jailed for 17 years for conspiracy to import cocaine.

Iktilat was jailed for 30 years, Frigieri for ten years and Tate for 16 years.

Police appealed for information about two further suspects, Carlos Tabares and Nicholas John "Peter" Tayler.